I'm Sally, try me!

I awoke at around eleven o'clock to find Polly snuggling up.

"You don't have to work for an hour yet," she coaxed. She reached for
the three sprays by her bedside table and gave herself a shot of each:
the contraceptive, then the anti-digestion and finally the happy spray.
I didn't need the first two and wasn't allowed the happy spray today as
I was classed as a technical employee. She then began to nibble an
enormous block of chocolate. I waited politely for her to get through
her morning dose of chocolate and for the happy spray to kick in; we
had been co-habs for over three years and I knew where her priorities
lay. But to my surprise she put the chocolate back half-eaten and
jumped out of bed, dragging me with her.

"Come on, let's go for a walk, the weather's great!"

Although it was February the weather was indeed great; the seeders had
planned a shower for the evening when few people were at work but it
would still be a long time before the clouds began to form. We went
down to the lake which was heaving with wildfowl; a young man was
throwing bread to the scavenging gulls.
"That's Rob," Polly informed me, "he's on bird feeding 9-12 shift."
Polly's shift at the lake was Wednesday 6-9; not many people liked to
get up that early so there were always vacancies for the first shifts.
As for me, my job was to oil houses Tuesday 12-3. That is, all the
odd-numbered houses in our street with the exception of Mr. McFarland
at number 17 who did all his own oiling; this was officially frowned
upon, of course, as it could lead to serious unemployment if it caught
on, but as he was old and weird they let him be. Christine at number 28
oiled all the even-numbered houses on Thursdays 3-6 and we would cover
for each other in the unlikely event of sickness or accident; technical
employees are expected to show above-average responsibility in return
for above-average credits.

We watched the young man move across to the fallow fields beyond the
lake; against the fence stood a mound of grey-brown knobbly tubers
called potatoes which he began to toss to the wintering geese which had
started to waddle and honk towards him. Polly was looking pensive; a
bad sign, as it turned out.

" I wonder where the geese go when they leave Braffa Lake next month?
They always fly north; why do they leave when there's so much food
here?" she asked with a strange faraway look in her eyes.

"Who cares?" I replied, "They always come back, so you've always got a
job."

In summer when the birds didn't need feeding she did a Saturday ice
cream distribution shift instead; she enjoyed the seasonal variation. I
like ice cream in summer, though you then have to make sure you take
the anti-digestive or it plays havoc with the nutrients.

Back at the house she asked me to rummage through my arcane book
collection to see if I had something called an atlas; another sign of
the impending change in our relationship - I had never yet seen her
open a book, although we had all learnt basic reading at school as part
of historical studies. She explained that an atlas was a large, thin
book with coloured maps and I found it nestling between an old, thick
book called The Bible and a long-redundant car maintenance manual. Of
course, I hardly ever opened any of these books myself, after all we
had the Unicam to tell us anything we wanted to know, but a lot of
people kept a few books, the young people for fun, curiosity and trendy
decor and the old people for nostalgia. There was a small one in my
collection called Chicken Licken which I recall had some nice pictures
of a goose, but I had never got round to reading it properly. She
opened the atlas and pored over its pages. I peered over her
shoulder.

"What's that blue stuff?" I queried.

" I think that's meant to represent water," she suggested. "Those geese
might be able to cross the water, maybe they go somewhere wild and
remote to breed?"

I pooh-poohed the theory; after all, when people wanted to breed they
got a permit and booked in at the birthery, they certainly weren't mad
enough to take themselves off into the wilderness where anything might
happen.

"Maybe they drop off in Glags or Edibry, maybe the food's better there
in summer," I surmised.
I only knew of these places from old Mr McFarland who used to live way
up north as a boy; he also spun stories of people in the old days who
lived on high mountains and killed things for food until someone
decided it wasn't worth while fitting the Unicam in remote places, so
they all had to gave up their beastly primitive lives and got shipped
to Glags and put in modern houses which only needed oiling once a week.
He was a weirdo whose availability band was defiantly set to red even
though he wasn't a co-hab; one or two of the old folk had insisted and
finally got their way on this. I couldn't find Glags or Edibry on the
atlas though; for that matter, I couldn't even find Braffa or Lees,
which was our nearest megacity. My parents had taken me for a brief
visit to Lees once; it was just like Braffa but with more houses and
lakes; in those days the seeding wasn't too reliable and it had begun
to rain so we had hurried to get back home quickly. Other than that,
like most of our neighbours, I've never been outside of Braffa; I've
never had need to.

"And what about the little tweeting birds which come here in the
summer, and those which swoop round your head? Where are they now?" she
continued to muse as she put the atlas back.

"Dunno" I replied and switched on the Unicam. Braffa softball team had
a game on, a cup-tie against Birmnem and I didn't want to miss it. But
Polly carried on rifling through the books and suddenly let out a
shriek as though she had been shot. She had food an old book with
pictures of birds on the cover which I had always assumed was a sort of
longer version of Chicken Licken. She flicked through the pages eagerly
and grabbed my arm roughly.

"LOOK!" she exclaimed. "There are little pictures, like in the atlas.
It tells you what all the birds are called and where they go! Af-ri-ca,
that's the little ones ... and here's the geese, they go to places in
the North called Ice-land and Green-land. I was right, they DO cross
the water!" She took the bird book with her to bed that night and was
still reading when I fell asleep. Next day I found her reading the
Bible, then she started another big book by someone called Lawrence
followed by an even bigger book by a guy called Tolkien; I had gotten
the idea that big books were somehow more impressive artefacts than
small ones, so I had collected quite a few of these whoppers, but I had
never thought that modern people like us would find the inclination to
actually read them. It took her a couple of weeks to get through those
three. When she finished the Tolkien one I noticed there was watery
stuff running down her cheeks and I suggested we went to the medicentre
and get her checked over but she said that she was all right and I
probably wouldn't understand. Then, over the next few days, came the
questions: Why wasn't Middle Earth in the atlas? Why didn't Frodo just
stay in Rivendell where there was nice music and good food? Why didn't
Jesus run away and hide when Judas came with the soldiers? Why did
Ursula Brangwen want to teach in that horrible school? Why did the love
scenes with Ursula and Rupert make her feel randy when there were no
pictures and no explicit words like on the Unicam? (I think I could
have profited from that one, but I was only half-listening). Why are
female ducks a different colour from the males? Why don't we get
ospreys in Braffa when they're in the bird book? What's a gearbox
anyway? I buried myself in the Unicam, watching sexmatch cartoons and
softball games, playing Auto-Ludo and Tiddle Your Wink; anything to get
away from the ceaseless questioning to which there were, of course, no
real answers.

Polly continued to read, and we continued to grow further apart as
weird questioning developed into weird deeds; I watched from the porch
as she deliberately went out into the rain one night and came back,
laughing and dripping. She made a proper fire and cooked one of the
goose potatoes and ate it, not caring about the nutrient imbalance. She
spent ages doing something called praying, just because the old Bible
recommended it.

Finally the fateful day arrived. Polly packed all her things into four
trolleys - including my books, she was welcome to those, considering
the trouble they'd caused - and hitched them to her autocart. Then she
decoupled the modem links next to the Unicam and our availability bands
switched from red to green; it was strange to be glowing green again, I
would have to get used to sleeping alone with a dull green light in the
room instead of two red ones. She gave me a final kiss - ironic, as
we'd hardly been on touching terms for weeks - and began to steer her
little train of belongings down the drive and into the street.

"I wanted ?" but she couldn't finish what she was saying and turned
away.

"I think I'll go mono for a while," she continued in a low voice, still
not looking at me. Very strange - oldies whose partners couldn't be
resussed sometimes went mono, at least for a few weeks, but she was
fit, young and far too good-looking to have any real excuse. They'd
probably give her psychometrics, call her a pervert and give her a few
extra shifts as punishment for causing such hassle, and moreover the
new mono houses didn't have a very good view of the lake. Polly's
little train set off down the street. Mr McFarland, who was leisurely
oiling his house, waved goodbye but I didn't; I felt very strange in my
stomach, as though the nutrient mix was a bit awry, and realised the
watery stuff was now running down my face too. Stranger still; weird,
in fact. I went for a walk round the lake, noticing that for every
brightly coloured duck there seemed to be a brown one alongside.

Later that evening there came a knock at the door. I opened it and
there stood a young woman in a diaphanous gown through which her skimpy
underwear clearly showed; her availability band glowed bright green and
I noticed that her autocart was towing no less than eight trolleys;
definitely a good sign. She opened the first trolley to show me its
contents; it was full of chocolate and sex toys. An outsize happy spray
was squeezed into one corner.

"I'm Sally. I'm after a new co-hab, do you want to give it a try?" she
asked brightly.

"OK" I said, and invited her in.